EVANSTON, ILLINOIS surrenders to LA RAZA
THE MEXICAN OCCUPATION and LA RAZA SUPREMACY
EXPANDS BORDER TO BORDER!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/sanctuary-city-evanston-illinois-falls.html
A municipality just outside Chicago, Illinois has now pledged itself to be a home for illegal aliens who want to be shielded from federal immigration law, officially claiming the mantle as a sanctuary city.
Protest by Illinois auto parts workers wins broad support on Facebook
Protest by Illinois auto parts workers wins broad support on Facebook
By Shannon Jones
7 January 2017
A video posted on Facebook of police removing angry workers from the cafeteria of a factory in Belvidere, Illinois has been widely shared and viewed, drawing attention to the brutal treatment routinely meted out by corporate America to workers.
Some 258 workers at the Android II plant, an auto supplier that builds engines for Fiat Chrysler (FCA), were laid off from their jobs on December 23, two days before Christmas, after the company said the automaker declined to renew its contract. Workers say the company shortchanged them in their final paycheck, which did not include contractually stipulated vacation pay. In some cases, the amounts owed were substantial—as much as $1,500 after taxes.
Unable to get answers from local plant management a few days later, scores of workers went to another Android factory and asked to speak to management. The plant manager invited the workers to wait in the company’s cafeteria, but then summoned police, who escorted workers outside. The entire confrontation was recorded and posted on Facebook. The post had some 46,000 views at the time of this writing.
Android is a multi-national corporation based in Auburn Hills, Michigan that specializes in auto parts production and logistics. It has 16 plants in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Spain.
Workers at Android II are members of United Auto Workers Local 1268, which also serves as the bargaining agent for workers at the huge Fiat Chrysler Belvidere Assembly Plant. The same day that the Android II plant was shuttered, Belvidere Assembly closed for a five-month retooling. The facility is being converted from production of the Jeep Compass and Jeep Patriot in order to produce the new Jeep Cherokee. Belvidere assembly ended production of the Dodge Dart in September in the wake of the announcement by FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne that the company was ending small car production in North America.
The Local 1268 web site did not contain any mention of the protest by Android II workers, nor has the UAW issued any statement on their fight. A call by this reporter to Local 1268 was not returned.
At least four auto parts plants in the Belvidere area that made parts for Fiat Chrysler were impacted by the shutdown. At least 700 workers were affected by job cuts. Unlike FCA workers, workers at auto parts suppliers are not eligible for supplementary unemployment benefits (SUB). Workers at parts suppliers typically make far less than workers at assembly plants, sometimes earning poverty wages of $11 or $12 an hour.
Bridget Moyer, the Android II worker who posted the video of the confrontation with management and who has emerged as a spokesperson for the workers, spoke to a local web site, Rockfordscanner.com, after the protest. She said that in some cases the company owed workers more than 120 hours of accumulated vacation pay. “The contract I am speaking of is a law abiding contract they are breaking… Not only did they take our jobs, but now, two days after Christmas we are finding out we also lost our vacation pay.”
In other comments posted on Facebook, Moyer says, “The plant manager and human resource manager were giving us excuses, but really not giving us answers. They invited us into the cafeteria to speak to them; they really didn’t speak to us. In the process they called the police and had us escorted out of the building.
“From the get go this company has done nothing but screw all of us over. They are not giving us answers. They are saying corporate agreed to this... we just want answers and we got kicked off the property.”
The Facebook video shows Android II plant workers peacefully assembled in the company cafeteria. Police arrive and tell the workers they cannot force the plant management to provide any information and that workers must leave the plant because it is private property.
The layoff of Android II workers in Belvidere comes amidst a spate of layoffs by the Detroit-based auto companies as the car sales boom of the past several years appears to be winding down. The UAW’s role has been to facilitate the layoffs, smothering any opposition to the job cuts, which it insists are necessary to preserve management’s “cost-efficiency.”
In the case of the temporary closure of the Belvidere plant, the UAW has hailed the restructuring, which has forced the 4,500 workers who are being laid off to subsist on SUB pay and unemployment benefits amounting to about 74 percent of their standard pay. Temporary and contract workers, who under terms of the 2015 UAW national contract, comprise an expanded portion of the workforce, are not even eligible for SUB benefits, nor are regular employees with less than one year seniority.
Last summer, FCA eliminated a shift at the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant (SHAP) north of Detroit, as a move to phase out production of the Chrysler 200 passenger car. SHAP was indefinitely closed in December as it retooled for the production of the new Dodge Ram. Altogether, some 3,000 workers have been impacted by the SHAP layoffs, with temporary and part-time workers again taking the hardest hit.
The decision by FCA and other automakers to focus production on larger, less fuel efficient vehicles such as light trucks and SUVs, leaves automakers vulnerable if gas prices again spike. As always, workers will bear the brunt of any collapse in the car market. Meanwhile, the Detroit automakers continue to post near-record profits, with GM handing out some $9 billion in dividends and stock buybacks to investors while at the same time laying off workers.
AMERICA: One paycheck and two illegals away from homelessness.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/america-one-paycheck-and-two-illegals.html
"The economists found that the pre-tax share of national income
received by the bottom half of the US population has been cut
nearly in half since 1980, from 20 percent to 12 percent, while the
income share of the top one percent has nearly doubled, from 12
percent to 20 percent."
The class struggle in the US in 2017
The class struggle in the US in 2017
By Jerry White
4 January 2017
The year 2017 promises to be one of increasing class struggle in the United States and around the world. In every country, the ruling elites and their political servants want to make the working class pay for the global economic crisis and the costs of war.
In the US, the working class will confront a government unlike any other in American history, which will continue and intensify a decades-long social counterrevolution overseen by the Democrats and Republicans. The incoming Trump administration is manned by billionaires, generals and arch reactionaries. It is a government of, by and for the oligarchy, committed to destroying every remaining gain won by workers over the past century.
Trump wants to “Make America Great Again”
by eliminating any restrictions on corporate
profit, from minimum wage laws and
occupational safety, health and
environmental protections, to bedrock social
programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social
Security. Workers will fight against these
attacks, and any illusions sections of workers
may have had in Trump are already being
rapidly dispelled.
While hardly reported by the mass media, 2017 opens with a series of strike threats and labor contract expirations in the US. These include:
· 145,000 workers at the largest US railroads who have been working without a new contract for a year. The workers are opposing sweeping health care cuts, cuts to vacation time and unsafe working hours. They could face a strikebreaking intervention by Trump.
· More than 30,000 transit workers in New York City who are holding a mass meeting this weekend and have a January 15 contract expiration date with no agreement in sight. Another 460 bus drivers and mechanics for the regional transportation system in Dayton, Ohio have voted to strike on January 9 over health care and work conditions. In addition, 10,000 Chicago Transit Authority workers face a contract fight this year.
· 4,000 General Electric Appliance workers in Louisville, Kentucky, who rejected a wage-cutting deal recommended by the local and national leadership of the International Union of Electrical-Communications Workers of America in November. The same month, 1,200 airline mechanics at UPS’s super-hub in Louisville overwhelmingly voted to strike against health care cuts.
· 38,000 Illinois state workers who are in a contract impasse with Republican Governor Bruce Rauner’s demands for sharp hikes in health care costs and changes to overtime rules.
· 700 workers at Momentive Performance Materials in Waterford, New York, north of Albany, and Willoughby, Ohio (near Cleveland) who have been on strike for three months. It was recently revealed that a key advisor to president-elect Donald Trump, Blackstone Group founder and CEO Stephen Schwarzman, owns a stake in Momentive.
The assault on health care, pensions and wages was at the center of Obama’s economic policies. This will only be intensified under Trump. Some 120,000 retired coal miners and their dependents face the cut off of health and retirement benefits, some as early as April, because of the near-bankruptcy of the United Mine Workers funds.
Thousands of General Motors workers are facing the elimination of their jobs over the next few months, as the giant automaker, working with the UAW, seeks to slash jobs as car sales slow. Trump has appointed GM CEO Mary Barra to his corporate competitiveness board.
With great fanfare on Tuesday, Ford and the UAW announced that the company was canceling plans to build a new $1.6 billion plant in Mexico and would invest instead in expanding a plant in suburban Detroit. Ford CEO Mark Fields said the decision was made because, “One of the factors we’re looking at is a more positive US manufacturing business environment under President-elect Trump and some of the pro-growth policies he said he’s going to pursue. And so this is a vote of confidence.”
Indeed, the Ford executives and wealthy investors will certainly reap the benefits of tax cuts, deregulation and other anti-working class policies the Trump administration will pursue, while the UAW bureaucrats are more than willing to offer their services.
The growth of class conflict poses basic political questions for every section of the working class.
First, the struggles of workers must not be subordinated to the pro-capitalist trade unions, which in the United States and around the world function as instruments of corporate management and the state, not as workers organizations.
The past two years have already seen a significant increase in the efforts of workers to resist decades of declining real wages. In every case, they came into conflict with or were smothered by the pro-corporate, anti-working class trade unions, which worked closely with the Obama administration.
In late 2015, autoworkers rebelled against sellout contracts pushed by the United Auto Workers, which were only rammed through with a combination of lies, threats and fraud. Last year began with a series of wildcat sickouts by teachers in Detroit. The action of teachers was in defiance of the Detroit Federation of Teachers and its parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers, which shut them down and facilitated the passage of laws that deepened the attack on public education.
These actions were followed by the strike by 39,000 telecom workers at Verizon, a strike by 5,000 Minnesota hospital workers and a walkout by Philadelphia transit workers. All were isolated by the unions, which pushed through contracts that attacked jobs and living standards.
Workers must build new organizations of struggle, democratically controlled by the rank-and-file, and based on the methods of the class struggle. Every division used to weaken the working class must be overcome and a common struggle waged to defend the social rights of all workers.
Second, a real struggle to defend jobs and living standards must reject the economic nationalism that has long been promoted by the unions to subordinate workers to the profit interests of their “own” corporate bosses.
The growth of the class struggle must and will take on an increasingly international form. Over the past year, major strikes and demonstrations broke out throughout Europe, including in France against reactionary labor “reforms,” and in Portugal and Greece in opposition to austerity measures dictated by the banks. India saw one of the largest one-day strikes in human history against the right-wing agenda of Narenda Modi, while in China the number of strikes and protests in the first half of 2016 was up 20 percent from the year before.
Strikes by teachers, oil workers and other sections of workers in defiance of state violence also took place in Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil. In Canada, the year ended with 9,300 teachers in Nova Scotia, Canada walking out over wage freezes and to demand increased educational funding.
Finally, the defense of the basic rights of workers is fundamentally a political struggle. In the incoming Trump administration, the reality of the state as an instrument of class rule is exposed in naked form. Yet anyone under the illusion that a Clinton administration would pursue a pro-worker policy need only look at the record of the past eight years and the response of the Democratic Party to the election of Trump. Rather than criticizing Trump for his right-wing agenda, the Democrats have denounced him for not being aggressive enough against Russia while pledging to work with him on imposing his policy of economic nationalism.
The political radicalization of American workers and youth in 2015 was expressed in support during the Democratic Party primaries for Bernie Sanders, who presented himself as a socialist and opponent of social inequality. Sanders’ carried out his assigned task of channeling this opposition behind the candidate of the status quo, Hillary Clinton. However, millions of people backed Sanders not because of his political treachery, but because they are seeking some way of opposing an economic system dominated by the corporate and financial aristocracy.
The essential question confronting workers in 2017 is the development of a socialist leadership for the momentous battles ahead. The Socialist Equality Party is fighting to unite every section of the working class and every struggle, for jobs, decent living standards, against police violence, war and the attack on democratic rights, into a single political movement to fight for socialism. We encourage all those who agree with the fight for socialism to join and build the SEP.
SOARING POVERTY IN AMERICA AS IT
HANDS MILLIONS OF JOBS TO
ILLEGALS AND BILLIONS IN
WELFARE!
America’s Economic Distress Belt
Income inequality and poverty used to be separate phenomena in America. Today, it’s a different story: More than forty percent of U.S. counties have high rates of both.
RICHARD FLORIDA
@Richard_Florida
12:47 PM ET
Comments
Share on Facebook
Tweet
Love CityLab? Make sure you're signed up for our free e-mail newsletter.
Income inequality has grown dramatically in America since the early 1980s. This is associated with a myriad of bad things, from worse health and higher rates of violence to locking in disadvantage and limiting the ability to move up the economic ladder.
But until recently, a county with higher inequality did not necessarily have a high concentration of poverty.
A new study from the Population Reference Bureau by Beth Jarosz and Mark Mather tracks the dramatic growth in inequality and poverty across America’s 3,000-plus counties over the past two-and-a-half decades.
Today, 41 percent of U.S. counties suffer from high levels of combined poverty and income inequality, up from just 29 percent back in 1989. Worse, as the table below shows, just 28 percent of counties have low levels of poverty and low levels of inequality. In other words, more than 70 percent of counties have either high levels of inequality, high levels of poverty, or both.
The chart below shows the level of inequality by various types of counties—large metropolitan counties, small and medium-sized counties, and non-metropolitan and rural counties.
In 1989, 11 percent of large metropolitan counties suffered from high levels of inequality, a figure that grew to 21 percent by 2014. The combination of inequality and poverty increased from 22 percent to 46 percent of small and mid-sized counties and expanded from 35 percent to 44 percent of rural and non-metropolitan counties over that same time period.
The maps below trace the growth in poverty and inequality across U.S. counties over this time. Green represents places with low poverty and low inequality, gold represents low inequality and high poverty, blue represents low poverty and high inequality, and red indicates the disturbing one-two punch of high inequality and high poverty.
Look how large sections of the map get redder over time: Today, the healthy pockets of green (representing low inequality and low poverty counties) are limited to the Midwest and Mountain regions of the country, along with parts of the Mid-Atlantic. The Sunbelt in particular has become America’s economic distress belt, with high levels of inequality and poverty.
While some commentators continue to extol the Sunbelt’s rapid growth and low housing costs, a rising number of people and places there are falling further behind both in absolute terms and compared to the rest of the country. Inequality and poverty are more than class issues: They are geographic ones as well.
OBAMA-CLINTON-TRUMPERnomics WORKS! But only for the SUPER RICH!
A recently completed study by economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman found that the share of national income received by the bottom half of the US population has been reduced from 20 percent in 1980 to 12 percent, while the income of the top 1 percent has risen from 12 percent to 20 percent. In other words, some 8 percent of national income has been transferred from the bottom half of the population to the top 1 percent.
UNDER BARACK OBAMA'S OPEN BORDERS AND TWO LA RAZA SUPREMACIST SECRETARY OF LABORS, 75% OF ALL JOBS WENT TO FOREIGN BORN, BOTH LEGAL AND ILLEGALS
Conducted by Harvard economist Lawrence Katz and Princeton economist Alan Krueger, it found that 94 percent of the 10 million jobs created during the Obama administration were temporary, contract or part-time positions. The proportion of workers engaged in such jobs increased from 10.7 percent of the population to 15.8 percent. At the same time, the study found that under Obama, there were 1 million fewer workers engaged in full-time jobs than there were at the start of the recession.
THANKSGIVING 2016 THE LAST BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
STAGGERING ADDICTION and POVERTY IN AMERICA
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/11/staggering-poverty-in-america-under.html
THE TWISTED ROAD TO REVOLUTION CAME DOWN WALL STREET
FIRST
OBAMA –CLINTONOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH
"Between 2002 and 2015 annual earnings for the bottom 90 percent
of Americans rose by only 4.5 percent, while earnings for the top
1 percent grew by 22.7 percent, according to the Economic Policy
Institute. Under the Obama administration, more than 90 percent of
income gains since the so-called “recovery” began have gone to
the top one percent."
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/11/comes-revolution-class-struggle-in-us.html
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike,
has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This
is the way a great country is raided by its elite.”
---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
AMERICAN HAS FOUND MILLIONS OF JOBS FOR ILLEGALS AND BILLIONS FOR WELFARE.... BUT FOR AMERICANS... Nada!
“Behind this year’s surge is a toxic mix of cuts to social services, unemployment, hopelessness…”
Panic at America’s malls: Class tensions at the breaking point
Panic at America’s malls: Class tensions at the breaking point
By Eric London
28 December 2016
The scenes of chaos and panic that played out at more than 15 shopping malls across the United States on Monday convey the tense and explosive character of social life in America at the end of 2016.
What began as one of the busiest shopping days of the year ended with large-scale evacuations, dozens of arrests, numerous injuries and entire malls on police lockdown.
Heavily armed police cleared crowds of youth at a number of shopping malls, primarily those located in working-class neighborhoods. Bystander video shows hysterical shoppers running away as police armed with assault rifles and military helmets move in to subdue large groups of youth.
Though there is no indication that the gatherings of young people were coordinated, a remarkable pattern emerges from what can be pieced together about the separate events.
In the early evening, as the malls reached peak activity, hundreds of young people began to converge in what the youth billed as “fights” in social media posts. Small scuffles broke out between individual young people, most of whom were on winter break from high school, and the crowds grew larger.
Word passed and a mood of panic set in. Rumors of shooting incidents spread rapidly. Jittery onlookers interpreted loud noises as gunshots. There were many reports of people shouting, “Gun!” People were injured as thousands sought to flee the crowded malls for the perceived safety of their cars.
At a mall in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a local news program reported “chaotic panic and everybody running all at once” after the sound of a chair slamming into the floor was mistaken for gunfire. An eight-year-old and a 12-year-old were injured in the evacuation as police surrounded and entered the mall.
In Garden City, New York, where seven people were injured, eyewitnesses described a “stampede” after dozens of people called police, erroneously believing a shooting was taking place. In Newport News, Virginia, a local news organization reported that people “were running out of the mall screaming; some people feared for their lives after they heard rumors that someone was running around the mall with a gun.”
Police cleared two malls in Memphis, Tennessee and arrested seven youth after fights and false reports of shootings. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, youth set off firecrackers and “kicked off a wave of panic,” according to a CNN report. In Brentwood, Ohio, outside Cleveland, police placed a mall on lockdown and arrested a young person “for attempting to strike an officer that was dealing with another disorderly patron.” Police used pepper spray to disperse the crowd.
Five young men between the ages of 14 and 16 from Hartford, Connecticut, a largely impoverished city, were arrested at a mall in nearby Manchester, where officers called in backup from neighboring jurisdictions and descended on the facility to break up gatherings of hundreds of youth. Similar events took place in Farmington, Connecticut; Aurora, Illinois; Fort Worth, Texas; Syracuse, New York; Monroeville, Pennsylvania; Tempe, Arizona; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Aurora, Colorado, where police reported that over 500 youth “surrounded an off-duty officer” who was attempting to detain another youth.
Meanwhile, the city of Chicago was hit by the most deadly wave of shooting violence in twenty years, with 53 wounded and 11 killed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. As DNAInfo reported, “Behind this year’s surge is a toxic mix of cuts to social services, unemployment, hopelessness…”
Just hours before the mall disorders took place, and after the devastating weekend in Chicago, Obama was interviewed on CNN by David Axelrod, his former campaign manager. Amidst much laughter and mutual flattery, Obama touted his presidential tenure and presented himself as a fighter for social justice. “I would argue that during the entire eight years that I’ve been president, that spirit of America has still been there in all sorts of ways,” he declared.
In his end-of-the-year press conference on December 16, Obama spoke of “how far we’ve come over the past eight years,” before adding that “by so many measures, our country is stronger and more prosperous than it was when we started. That’s a situation that I’m proud to leave for my successor.”
The mall eruptions expose as a lie the saccharine picture of America painted by the corporate press and Obama as his administration draws to a close. That mini-riots took
place in fifteen different locations located
hundreds of miles from one another shows
that something is profoundly wrong with
America.
Monday’s free-for-all in Aurora, Colorado took place at the same mall where James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 70 others in July 2012. Since Obama took office, 122 people have been killed in school shootings alone. The response of the government has been two-fold: empty banalities and the militarization of the police.
Though concerns for their immediate safety may have provoked shoppers to take flight, the underlying anxieties are rooted in social relations that are dominated by the vast levels of economic inequality that loom over every aspect of life in the United States.
The outbursts of violence and fear took place against the backdrop of a holiday season ritualized by the media to conceal the brutal fact that all human relations are mediated through the buying and selling of commodities. While this process reaches a fever pitch at Christmas—the make-or-break period for retail profits—the commodification of human relations, with the general tension and frustration it produces, is essential to all social relations under capitalism.
The United States is a country dominated by a
financial oligarchy, both economically and
politically. The vast majority of the people
have no outlet for expressing their own social
interests. All of the official institutions,
including the corporate-controlled media, the
two big-business parties and the trade
unions, are dedicated to stifling social
opposition and generating higher corporate
profits.
Half of all high school students—those fifteen years of age and younger—